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The Dark Ages: Myth or Rooted

 A decade of the coldest weather, the planet was shrouded in darkness due to volcanic eruptions. Ten years of agricultural failures led to famine and malnutrition, which led to the Justinian plague. This began 250 years of very hard times. Welcome to the actual Dark Ages.

 A volcanic eruption sends a huge volume of ash and sulfur into the stratosphere, which is dispersed to cover the entire planet, reflecting sunlight away from the earth. Insolation would have been at twilight levels, though not pitch black. "Shrouded" in this case, means covered as by a veil.  (For more information google "Volcanic Winter".)

This would have had two effects: with so little light, crops would have had difficulty producing during this time. Also, with light reflected into space, the earth would have been noticeably cooler, also affecting plant production. A single large eruption has measurable effects for 2 years after the eruption due to the aerosols remaining suspended in the atmosphere for extended periods of time, gradually lightening over time. 

There is some evidence that this was a period of increased seismic activity and there were possibly multiple eruptions, increasing the overall volume of ash and aerosols and extending the period of relative darkness.  This information is taken from ash layers found in ice cores as well as investigating tree growth rings, showing corresponding lean growth years. Some researchers suggest there were at least three such eruption events in AD 536, 539 and 545. 

The suggestion is that these eruptions happened in North America and Central America, though many of the written observations of the darkening skies and cooler temperatures were recorded in Europe and Central Asia, Byzantium/Constantinople.  Because of this, we know that such eruptions must have involved sufficient material to obscure the atmosphere of large portions of the planet.  Each event may have had more than one eruption.  For example, in North America in the year 536, there is evidence of multiple eruptions in California, the Pacific Northwest and the Aleutian Islands, all within the same year. 

By the same reasoning, it is likely that most European populations had no real idea what was causing the dimming of sunlight,  and even among the well educated, where the volcanic activity occurred.   The Roman historian Procopius recorded in AD 536 in his report on the wars with the Vandals, "during this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness... and it seemed exceedingly like the sun in eclipse, for the beams it shed were not clear".

Reports of the period of reduced sunlight and increasing cold are found in records from Ireland, Rome, Israel, and China, among other references, all dating to this exact year and time span.  Comments include "a failure of bread", "a time of great cold and famine".  

Political Repercussions

 Broadly speaking, this was the time of the mobilization of the Alar Horsemen to the west, themselves displaced by their local herdsman neighbors.  Driving west, and driving local populations ahead of them, they eventually migrated to interact with the eastern Roman Empire, contributing to or hastening its collapse.  At the same time in the far west, the was the theoretical time of the Arthurian Legends.  Roman rule in Briton came to an end in the early 400s AD.  For the next 100 years, the British Isles saw a tension between the native Celtic people in the west and the migrant Angles and Saxons from the Germanic region.

 Just as a total aside, it is theorized that there was a similar earthquake storm around 1225 BC, contributing to the Bronze Age collapse for similar reasons. 

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